The Awkward Wardrobe Stage No One Warns You About.

The Awkward Wardrobe Stage No One Warns You About.

There’s a really lovely moment when you’re losing weight where your clothes just start feeling more comfortable. Not smaller yet, just easier. Less like they’re working against you. And for me that was the moment it started feeling real. Like okay, this is actually happening.

And then a bit later I caught sight of myself in the mirror and I looked like a dishevelled bag lady.

Which was not the transformation content I had been promised.

The thing is, somewhere between “my clothes feel comfortable” and “I need a new wardrobe” there’s this stage where everything is just hanging off you in ways that aren’t doing you any favours. I wasn’t ready to go shopping, my size was still moving, I didn’t know where I was heading yet, and spending money on clothes that might only fit for six weeks felt daft. But I also couldn’t keep leaving the house looking like I’d borrowed my clothes from someone considerably larger and hadn’t noticed.

It reminded me - and bare with me here - of being about seven years old at my best friend’s house. Her mum had these incredible negligees. Early seventies, proper floaty baby doll style with the little coverups, absolutely fabulous in the way that only things from that era really were. And her sister and I would twirl around the garden in them playing dress up, completely delighted with ourselves, drowning in fabric that was nothing like our size.

That’s what I looked like, but not at all as glamorous as my seven-year-old felt.

So I had to get creative. Not buy-a-new-wardrobe creative. More like actually-look-at-what-I-own-and-figure-out-what-can-be-rescued creative. Belts. Layers. Things that could pull something in or make the draping look intentional rather than accidental. Working out what still had a life in it and what was just taking up space and quietly making everything harder.

Once I had a system for it the whole thing just… settled down. Mornings stopped being this low-level stressy thing where I was pulling stuff out and putting it back and feeling vaguely defeated before the day had even properly started. And when the mornings got easier something else happened that I wasn’t expecting - I actually had headspace back. Proper thinking space. The kind where you can stand in your kitchen and remember your best friend’s mum’s negligees and smile about it rather than just ricocheting from one mild wardrobe crisis to the next.

It’s a small thing. But it turns out a calm morning has quite a long reach.

Which is why I ended up creating The In-Between Wardrobe Reset - a practical wardrobe reset for changing bodies, in-between sizes, and clothes that no longer fit the way they used to. Because the awkward middle stage is real, and it deserves more than “just go shopping” as its only solution.

The Size Shift

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